Prompt provided to make sure students knew what they were required to complete:

Consider ways to expand the application of both scaffolding and metacognition in your future teaching. Consider new ways to activate prior knowledge gleaned from the reading materials in your future teaching.

How do you typically motivate students to read new material and/or experience new concepts in your classroom?

Based on your assigned readings, has your idea of the role of prior knowledge in learning changed? If so, how? And how do you plan to apply what you've learned in your classroom? What specific strategies do you think you may use? Why?

Extend the thinking and wisdom of the group by engaging with at least two of your classmates' responses.

Authors

Meixun Zheng is a doctoral student in Literacy/Language and Technology Education in the department of Curriculum & Instruction at North Carolina State University. She is currently working as a graduate research assistant in the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at NCSU. Correspondence can be sent to The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, 1890 Main Campus Drive, Campus Box 249, Raleigh, NC, 27606.

Hiller Spires, Ph.D. is currently a Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Friday Institute. Building on her previous research related to cognitive and socio-cognitive aspects of literacy, Dr. Spires studies the integration of emerging technologies in order to illustrate research-based, best practices for new literacies and learning. Dr. Spires was the founding director for the Friday Institute; since August 2006 she has been serving in the role of senior research fellow and providing leadership for the New Literacies Collaborative. She is Co-PI on the NSF-funded Crystal Island project that focuses on the effects of game-based literacies on science learning and academic dispositions including problem solving.